My interwebz reading gems of 2017
Everything that I found worth keeping this year (Warning: geeky stuffz 💡💻📱💸⌚️🌄: tech, SAAS, crypto, AI,…)
It’s finally here!!
My first blog post. I’M PSYCHED 😀🚀
I have wanted to start blogging for years now, but kept pushing it down my calendar. Maybe because of Tim Urban’s Instant Gratification Monkey 🐒or myfear from those vicious internet trollers 👹.
Why do I want to blog? Well the answer was so long that I moved it. Read
What made me finally pull the trigger?
New Year’s resolutions are something beautiful. For some it’s the end of bad habits like smoking, for others it’s the beginning of a new ritual. And if yours is reading more, here is an assist! Enjoy.
TL;DR
As the title already gave away, I created an overview of the best articles that I read this year. It’s the perfect get-to-know-me post! I hope you find at least one fun-fact for the next watercooler talk!
By the way : Medium Staff, I make this list for myself each year and somehow it went to over 50% Medium articles in 2 years. Impressive.
For every post I have added a one or two-sentence description, so you can see if you’re interested in reading the full article or if you just want to skim my post. BTW, don’t hate on me for being brutally concise 😐
I split my post up in the following categories:
- AI & Machine Learning 🤖
- (Autonomous) Cars 🚗
- Amazon (yep they are that big 😏)
- Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies 💸
- Building a Software Business 🚀
- Other (Always have an other category ⚡️)
Oh and if they are is one thing you follow this year, it should be the end-of-january debut of the Falcon Heavy. The world’s most powerful rocket , which will put a Tesla 🚗 into the orbit of Mars ☀️. Geeks going wild! Read
AI & Machine Learning 🤖
AI or Artificial Intelligence is a bloated term meaning anything a machine does that mimics the capabilities of the human mind. Machine learning is the process by which software developers train an AI algorithm, using large sets of data relevant to the task. The algorithm spots patterns in the data, enabling it to recognize similar patterns in new data. A huge part of our human activities require recognizing or understanding what we perceive to decide what to do next (like driving a car).
A good post on how to start talking about the same thing. AI is bloated. Read
Debunking machine learning myths one at a time. Read
Rodney Brooks blog posts on the future of AI and Robots are worth your time. The seven deadly sins on making predictions on the future (of AI). Read Predicting the future is really hard. Let’s stop being so scared of Hollywood Scenario’s. AI is currently about automating or mimicing some human task and far from taking over the world. Let’s focus on some of the ethics problems like global-scale behavioural manipulation? Love exact by-the-date predictions. They go from 2018 to NIML (not-in-my-lifetime). Read
Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and A.I. Experts want to ban killer robots. Read Forget killer robots 🤖- Bias is the Real AI Danger. Software is made by humans and so will it be opionated? Racist? Gender-unequal? Read
Super-AI taking over the world is unlikely if you understand how intelligence works. Just read the conclusion the rest is way to complex 😃 Read
Intelligence is situational — there is no such thing as general intelligence. Your brain is one piece in a broader system which includes your body, your environment, other humans, and culture as a whole.
Mckinsey’s report on the automated future predicts unprecedented productivity growth. Based on their research almost every occupation has a partial automation potential, but only 5% of occupations will truly dissapear. Read
Every one of the big tech companies is funding a PR machine around AI and machine learning to attract engineers and shape their image. Facebook Google Comparison post Amazon Apple Microsoft
DAMN, they are paying 300–500K$ for fresh out of college AI graduates. Read
The magic of deep learning has serious limitations: turning meaning into vectors, then incrementally learning complex geometric transformations that map one space to another. Read Read
AI-based startup are ridiculous. Except if you are building middleware, AI is just part of the technologies you can and should use if they are the best fit to solve your problems. Read
Youtube 📹 has already changed vastly thanks to ML. 70 percent of videos are now watched following automatic personalized recommendation. Read
Slack, the business chat app that got 6 million users in 3 years, hopes that AI will save their product. People have started questioning the positive impact on productivity they claim because Slack = Easier Sharing = More Information = More distractions. Read
Fun post on AI’s impact on fashion. Read
China and Russia think the leader of AI will become the leader of the world. But what does the CIA think. Well, they have 137 !! projects from predicting terrorism to improving face recognition. However, their biggest concern is their current inability to explain the results to their leaders (see below.) Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin riled the tech community when he said that displacement of jobs by artificial intelligence and automation is “50–100 more years” away. The tweets that followed where hilarious. Read Read
(Autonomous) Cars 🚗
A large part of the revolution in AI & Machine learning is focused on creating autonomous vehicles so I have put these articles apart from the rest, because well this is probably the coolest application by popular vote so far.
Voyage became the first operating driverless car taxi-service in a 4000-people retirement communitry in California on 15 miles of roads. Read
The amount of electronics in autonomous cars is astonishing and after watching the latest Fast & Furious I worry about mass hack. Read
A cool video presentation 📹 on self-driving cars that covers just about everything in a nutshell. Especially question 13 is interesting, will car ownership still exist or will we always Uber? Read
Bob Lutz former VP of GM on the death of driving, car ownership and potentially some 150-year old companies. Cars will become boring. Read
The vehicles, however, will no longer be driven by humans, human-driven vehicles will be legislated off the highways. Countries will have to admit 5 years in already that human drivers are causing 99.9 percent of the remaning accidents.
It’s easy to understand what autonomy can mean for the way we drive, but a drastic change in human behaviour always has unforeseen consequences. If we need a lot less cars, what will we do with all that parking space for example? Read
Nissan wants to have remote operators for cars in case their autonomous system fails. I think it’s a great idea actually, the most expensive part of the taxi is the driver, so having like 1 for every 10 cars is already revolutionary. Plus might trust these cars more if someone is monitoring the machine. Read
A deep post on the unexpected consequences of self-driving cars. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Especially the /flame at the end on how we should focus solving the real problems instead of pondering hypothetic ethics decisions made by robots, is quite entertaining. Read
An interview with the head of the Toyota Research Institute on the state of self-driving cars. Read
How autonomous vehicles are the nail to the coffin of our privacy. Spoiler alert: you can do a crazy bunch of stuff with video data… Read
Uber’s self-driving cars still need human help every 0.67 miles. We drive about 40 a year so still need a 30x improvement… 5–10 years? 👍 Read
A profile on Dyson, one of the most interesting companies of our time. Read
And they are also working on an electric car. Read
The power of simulation in developing self-driving cars made me a bit nostalgic to my time at the university where I made a tiny part of this. Read
Car dealers don’t understand what they are selling, surprise?! Read
Tesla launched its truck (Semi) and buyers can’t wait to boast about their pre-order. Talk about free marketing. Go Elon 🚚 Read Read This trucker remains un-impressed, says long distance won’t work and other UX critiques. Read
Uber starts researching flying cars. Read
And these guys have one ready. Welcome to the future. Read
Why bikes 🚲 and not cars are the future of (city) transportation and the lift-off of bike-sharing startups that want to own that future. Read Read
A review of everything that has leaked regarding Project Titan, Apple’s highly secretive project to develop a car to launch in 2019/2020. Read
This movie how (1m15s) phantom traffic congestion occurs (might be>50% of all congestion) and this dissapears if only 1:20 cars is autonomous. Read
Amazon 🏬
Yep they are so big, that I just gave them their own section. Applause to Jeff.
The best post: Amazon is eating the world. Why? Well it’s highly decentralized organizational structure. They open up every piece of their company to outside competition, which avoids slack everywhere. Read
Outsiders sometimes look at Amazon and wonder how Amazon can possibly focus on so many different businesses at once. The answer is that Amazon has fundamentally innovated in how to scale the process of bringing groups of people deeply up to speed in new spaces and making critical decisions based on that insight quickly. Their secret = Discipline.
Amazon is building their own cargo airport. ✈️ Read
Got nominated for an Oscar. 🎥 (These guys are in everything.) Read
A pretty huge essay on the question if Amazon’s dominance (46% of online shopping) should be investigated by anti-trust authorities. The answer: Since the 80’s, anti-trust officials have dumbed down anti-trust to price impact and they stay away from Amazon because it remains dirt-cheap. Read
This is just too amazing not to check out. Jeff in a mech warrior 🤖 Read
After almost a decade of food retail experiments with little success online, the e-commerce giant is embracing the physical stores it once shunned. Their reinvention of physical stores with Amazon Go should fascinate anyone. No more cashiers? They bought Whole Foods and now analysts predict they will buy Target next. Read Read Read Read
Fascinating article on high-speed change in Amazon prices. Read
Amazon launched a great AI blog to promote its vast array of products (and improve our understanding of AI). Read
Amazon is Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos is Amazon. Read his company-wide email.
Amazon becomes the largest clothings seller in th US, a sector once seen as impossible to replace with e-commerce. 40% of clothes get returned, but you can try them in the comfort of your home. Read
Luxury goods remain out of reach for Amazon because their customers focus on shopping experience, not on price or efficiency. My take: if they can’t bootstrap it, they’ll buy their way in. Read
Walmarts acquisition spree is basically their hope to turn-around their losing war against Amazon and they might be on to something with Jet.com Read
After basically killing real-world book stores, Amazon opens them again. Read
A story nobody would believe if you told it in a bar. Every year, Amazon scrambles to find temporary workers during the peak months of hectic commerce leading up to Christmas. In some parts of the U.S. that is extremely difficult. Since 2008, they operate CamperForce 🚌 (this is not a joke). These camper-owners are mostly 60 & 70-year-old retirees and a lot of them apparently joined after losing their pensions in the 2008 crisis. They drive across the country to work in deserted places doing physically taxing warehouse work… Double feelings… Read
Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies 💸
Blockchain is probably my NUMBER 1 side-project interest. It’s potential to revolutionize how the world operates seems unimaginable. That is also why this is probably the biggest section. Most people are interested in how they can earn money speculating on it, but i’m more interested in what the technology truly enables. Oh and please stop confusing Bitcoin and Blockchain. Bitcoin is an MVP to show off a new technology, that got totally out of hand. It’s a really foundational technology and like the internet it’s hard to predict what we’ll build on top of it. In my opinion it comes at time when it’s desperately needed. The complexity of the human colossus (read) keeps rising over time thanks to these kinds of foundational technologies that allow us to bring it to new heights.
I believe the essence of blockchain is that it can automate trust.
This is currently a human activity and it’s one of the reasons the internet has moved from its original roots as a decentralized system to a largely centralized nature. Most internet traffic now depends on Google & Facebook because they make sure the internet is not the wild west. Imagine checking the trustworthiness of every chain on the internet between you and the content provider. Yes, the stories on fake news show that this problem isn’t only a technical one to solve. However, the technology itself is quite promising to reduce our reliance on centralized parties for the technical part. Plus the internet is public domain and so the rule-making or at least some of it, should become a decision of society, not of a few corporations. I do believe the last mile will always be of a centralized nature because human beings love simplicity. owever that doesn’t imply the need for vertically integrated superpowers. We all know that power corrupts. Read
Public trust in the government remains historically low. Only 18% of Americans today say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (3%) or “most of the time” (15%). In the 60’s this was over 70%.
So I’m not talking just internet monopolies, our entire society is trusting all kinds of monopolies and often we shouldn’t get rid of them. We should find a way to balance their power. And Blockchain enables that promise to keep powerful centralized players like governments or private companies in check because we can force them to make their internal workings become more auditable. Just like standardized bookkeeping allows governments to audit finances and protect shareholders. We are all shareholders of our society so let’s figure out how this new way of trust should work.
Imagine what happens when you automate a human activity. Yes, you have to do something less, but also you create entirely new possibilities. Steam machines did not just automate 1 horse, they enabled applications that required 200 horses. Computers don’t just replace traders, they allow for new forms of high-frequency trading, that were impossible at human thinking speed. So what will automating trust do? I got the insight from Ben Evans, so follow him and he might gives his thoughts on that soon. Read
HBR’s take. Blockchain is a foundational technology: It has the potential to create new foundations for our economic and social systems. Great comparison with TCP/IP. Read
What will be Blockchain’s Killer Applications, every foundational technology has a few that really resulted in mass adoption. PC => the spreadsheet. The Internet =>E-mail, Search, Social Media, E-commerce and Blogging. Mobile => Taking pictures, GPS, the internet in your pocket. This guy sees 4 potential Killer Applications, I love the section on tokenization. Read
How double-entry accounting allowed the human colossus to 10x in complexity and how this is the true insight about blockchain. And well this post might be the only one you ever have to read to really understand the vision and current state of the technology. Great writer. Blockchain = Triple Entry Accounting. Read
A cool write-up on how to transform your business for the coming blockchain world. Eliminate intermediaries, increase consumer trust, improve your transaction speed, adopt new monitization models and impove security. Read
Want to get developing right away, this middleware might help! Read
Energy experts believe that blockchain technology can solve a maze of red tape and data management problems. Read Read Read
A list of every sector that might get disrupted by blockchain. Read
What is an ICO 💸and other more investor-like questions. Read Read
Not from 2017, but great as part of understanding crypto. Read Read Read
Head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, foresees the end of banking and the triumph of crypto-currency. Read
Every nation in the world started talking about regulations. 8 countries consider it officialy illegal to hold crypto-currencies. Read. Most of the attention is going to counter-terrorism, money laundering and how to tax this new asset class.Meanwhile the crypto-community tries to promote self-regulation with standards, rating agencies and other non-governmental techniques. 2018 will be very interesting. Some links: Germany Australia Thailand Belgium Russia Estonia Finland US Saudi Japan EU India China
Venezuela announces the first official government-created crypto-currency called Petro backed by at least 7Billion$ in Oil. Smart move, knowing the country has the biggest oil reserves in the world. Read However it seems like a desperate move as the country is collapsing in onethe biggest financial crisises in human history. The country went operates under a socialist regime and the Bolivar, the country’s official currency is now worth 10000x less than 5 years ago. Read The petro could be Venezuela’s escape from lending on the international markets, where it is haunted by U.S.-led sanctions. The uncertain economic situation has also resulted in real-world crypto-usage with employees and merchants preferring to get paid in bitcoin. Read
Bubble 💧 predictions throughout the year, but still no POP. Currently at 17K, some experts say: 25K in 2022, 60K in 2018 & 400K some-day. It’s also always fun to read people who were dead wrong 😆like this 2016 article where the writer laughs with Tim Draper who predicted in 2014 that bitcoing would hit 10K$ before 2018 and was proven right. Time-traveller?
And it went to new heights with celebrities like Floyd Mayweather, Jamie Foxx and Paris Hilton start backing crypto-currencies like its their newest puppy 🐶. Read And don’t be naïve, they are getting paid for it. The SEC warned them they should disclose it or face serious charges. Read
Building a (Saas) Business
I started a business in 2017. Currently we’re still operating mostly under the radar. You can check our website: www.getsleek.co (Our vision is to simplify your digitally complex life with better app integration.) This made me stumble on a ton of interesting: how to do it posts.
How to find ideas from VP @ Facebook. Find Problems & People. Read
WTF is strategy? Read
The epic guide to bootstrapping a startup. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Finding your initial audience is the hardest thing in building a new product, but here are some questions to ask yourself when faced with rejection. Read
Probably one of he best posts on Product-market fit so far. Read
Two great videos from Alan Kay on how to invent the future. Just watch :)
The metric that matters is not how many users, not-even how many active users, but how many users that behave as expected. Read
How to tackle business problems? Avoid them. Read
We’ve built our business on avoiding problems. It’s the fundamental reason we’ve been able to do what we do, and keep doing it — profitably, and with a small team — for 18 years and running. Whenever we make big decisions, we make them in the context of future cost. Basically, how much will things suck later if we do this today?
First principle product management. To learn is to read, to understand is to write, and to master is to teach. Read
The ultimate guide to building a data-driven software business. Read
Forget MVPs, start building MLPs. A Minimum Lovable Product is so intuitive, so satisfying to use, that your customer base can’t help but tell someone else about their experience.
Interview with the founder of Whatsapp that makes you realize, your goal shouldn’t be building a company, but changing the world. Read
It’s easier than ever to build a cloud-based platform, and harder than ever to extract value out of the software stack. What comes after SAAS? Read
Maybe the answer is, after SAAS comes Facebook (facebook is eating the internet anyway so.) Read Btw, this guy feared Facebook would destroy the internet as we knew it back in 2007. It’s evil is rooted in our genes. Read
Ever wondered what tools, startups use themselves? Read
Sophisticated software needs simple UI. Read
How to construct a powerful sales pitch. Read
Story on Ramen, value propositions, MVP launch and profitable growth. Read
Failing fast is bullshit. Researching fast is the real goal. Read
Documenting your workflow is core to building great products. Read
Stories from other startups. How Airbnb tackled the chicken & egg problem of new market places and grew X400 in 6 years from 10.000 to 4million hosts🏠. Read The fascinating history of $10 Billion Atlassian, maker of Jira. Read How Shopify went from online 🏂 shop to $10B e-commerce provider. Read Salesforce from 2000 to 2017. The end of software as we knew it. Read
Most of these posts are on building software businesses, but have you ever wondered how difficult it is to build a hardware business? Read it here from a company which is building a new kind of camera for creating movies, TV shows, and virtual reality experiences. Read
Hardware, Connected Devices / Internet of things
Let’s hope Apple’s Homekit increases the the home automation 🏠 market 10-fold and brings prices down with economies of scale. Plus I’m tired of tinkering around and want stuff that just works. Read Read
A little love for Ring, a smart doorbell and one of the most succesful domotics devices ever sold. Why? Ring enhances existing habits, instead of trying to change them. Read
Amazon keeps expanding their Echo line-up, banking on Alexa to become the world’s personal voice assistant. American friends tell me its a big thing and its taking over use-cases from the smartphone like to start playing music. The sales numbers are incredible (Hottest US christmas gift 2 years in a row). They are winning by a huge margin (70% of all sold smart home speakers) by against Apple, Microsoft, Google and Sonos. They expanded to 28 more countries this december. Generally, I am amazed though of how well it fits their corporate strategy of “Reducing the last mile”. The “Echo Look” might also be the coolest thing in fashion commerce ever. Read Read Read Read
Everyone is abandoning modular smartphones. I never understood the point anyway, parts get lost and when are you going to think of swapping them. It’ll work because it’d be nice if it did, is a guarantee for failure. Read Read
The iphone is 10 years old and the iphone X is the most expensive one yet 1150$… that’s like 30 grams of gold and other memes 😃 Does anyone really still expect innovation in smartphones? Yes the bezels got smaller, the battery time a bit longer and marketers invented some new fancy words like Face unlock. Read Read Read
Google’s project Treble, might mean that Android devices get updates longer, a long-running benefit enjoyed only by Apple devices. Read
The failure of juicer-company Juicero brought upon a lot of anti-Silicon Valley omments, but seems a bit over-extrapolating… Read
The real-world impacts of software-related issues get bigger and bigger. What happens if we put even more devices connected to the web? Read
A smart lock so delivery services can enter your home while you’re not home, sounds scary but Walmart & Amazon are pushing forward. Read Read
Virtual, Mixed and Augmented Reality
Virtual Reality puts its users in a fake world while Mixed/Augmented Reality adds content to the real world. The difference between MR/AR, can be found here, if you really care to know. VR died a silent dead in the nineties because the technology was far from ready. Renewed interest in the technology was spiked by the kickstarter campaign Oculus Rift, which finally shipped their device in 2016. I believe AR has much more potential to change human behaviour. Multiple MR/AR devices are now for sale in ‘developer edition’. Companies clearly hope that they will build the killer-applications required to actually be used for something. Will 2018 show that AR is the next platform to broadly revolutionize human interaction and helps us forget the smartphone or will its use remain limited to specific occupations?
Apple and Google paved the way this year to push AR mainstream. This cool buzzfeed article shows some very cool early applications like find your friends on a festival🎸. Who doesn’t want that problem solved? Read
ODG clearly hopes coolness is part of the answer to adoption. Read
The Ikea app was launched with the Iphone X and let’s you put furniture in your home like it’s already there. Read
Magic Leap, one of the most funded secrets ever, shows off. Read
Gabe Newell (Valve) says next generation of games won’t be mere demos. Still nothing on half-life 3 though 😏. Read
Nothing quite official from Apple yet on their own pair of AR glasses, but tons of acquisitions and hires that pointin that direction. The iGlass? Read
An insight in why AR/VR is so impactful from the Google VP of AR/VR. Read
Over the past several decades, every time people made computers work more like we do — every time we removed a layer of abstraction between us and them — computers became more broadly accessible, useful, and valuable to us. We, in turn, became more capable and productive.
Not really about AR/VR, but this amazing post on what direct Brain-to-computer communication might mean for society, is a must-read for everyone. Thanks to Wait But Why (Read all of his posts) and Elon Musk. Read
Tech was once always in your way. Soon, it will be almost invisible. You’ll forget it’s there. The retirement column of tech writer Walt Mossberg, nicknamed ‘The Kingmaker’ for his influence on the tech industry. Read
The BBC researched VR’s potential acceptance by audiences and concludes that the industry should focus on simplification and better content. Read
VR is bringing back arcades 🎮. Yay. Hope it doens’t bring a demogorgon though #mileven #strangerthings. Read Read
And finally: the silent rebirth of Google Glass as Glass for Enterprise. Read
Software & Digital Products
I studied computer science and run a software startup so naturally I read every opinion I can find: On the ruling technology giants of the planets and how they came to be ; On how small fundamental technology changes can change the applications we know so well ; and on how technology has a broad societal impact.
Product Graveyard. 💀 A list of obituaries from some of the biggest experiments ever to die. From Grooveshark to Windows Messenger.
Notification systems are evil. Our current notification systems fail to alleviate the constant tension between the need to be focused and the need to be informed; leading to an ever-distracted mind. Read
2017 will be remembered for wide-spread ransomware and zero-day exploits getting publicity with fancy names (NotPetya, WannaCry, Heartbleed). Hackers wreaked havoc and gained $Millions. Read
A great read on why IT projects fail because of the cost of complexity. Read And another one which made me laugh half a day. Read Software is like an onion that you have to peel carefully, or you’ll cry…
Ever wondered about the impact of online dating 💻 💌 on society? This post is full of crazy stats. 70% of same-sex couples meet online and Tindr has bumped the number of interracial marriages. Read
The next shift in industry is messaging, not AR/VR. Read
Android ‘instant apps’ are here. You can click on a link on a web page and the app downloads and starts running immediately, without needing an install. Say hello to a world without smartphones full of one-time used apps. Read
The problem with voice 🎤 apps, is needing to remember their name… I can’t even remember half of the apps on my phone and they have icons. Read
You can now search photos on Facebook on meaning. Read While this company figured out video search. Impressive. Read
Facebook basically copied Snapchat to remain dominant. Read Read Read
Adobe keeps moving to the cloud, putting its desktop users second. Read Meanwhile Electron wants to bring back local applications Read Webassembly wants to give the web the same power as local applications. Read
Google now has 5 chat products but I know nobody who uses them Read Read
NY Times & The Economist on Snapchat. Channels = Audiences? Read Read
Google activates ad-blocking by default in chrome on Feb 15. Might sound weird at first, but controlling what’s get blocked, might be the answer to improving ad quality and saving the ad-based business model. Read Read
A scary article on copying startups by FB, which we all expected… Read
In that trend: an interesting take on the question: can you still compete with GAFA (Google Apple Facebook Amazon)? Revolutionize monetization! Read
Note: blockchain might be a part of the answer too. See Appcoins
Why Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook. It’s changing from one of those tech things that some people sometimes did to one of those tech things that everyone you know does every day. Read My take: I have replaced much of my Facebook use with IG, because IG feels less addictive and bloated.
Mobile payments are so big in parts of urban China (6 T$ in 2016 versus only 112B$ in the US) that cash is considered obsolete. Read
Thank Aristotle for inventing computers. Read
The next 1 billion internet users are illiterate, they won’t type, but use video, voice and their smartphone impacting user experiences world-wide. Read
Japanese apparently has two words for child pornography, the legal kind and the illegal kind (yep weird) and this social network thrives on it. Read
Microsoft and Amazon can’t figure out wether to work together or to fight each-other in the battle for voice domination (Alexa & Cortana) Read
The Google monopoly and the publishing industry. Extreme concentrations of power will almost always be abused. Worried? Read
An historic overview of the Facebook and Google doupoly that runs most online advertising dollars. Plus a wake-up call: their core desire of perpetual growth (Facebook even more than Google) lacks a moral compass. There is a lot of research showing that Facebook makes people feel like shit. Read
Basecamp shows growth-above-all-else is not the only way to build a company. It might be the exception, but it’s users love them for it. Read
Zuckerberg on how Facebook has a positive impact by building communities. Probably to react on the growth of negativity surrounding our global facebook addiction. Read
Facebook employees continue to struggle with what, exactly the company is responsible for. There’s a real question if democracy can survive Facebook. Read
How Facebook knows who you know. Creepy. Again. Read Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are screwed.
Creepy 1: A man who years ago donated sperm to a couple, secretly, so they could have a child — only to have Facebook recommend the child as a person he should know. Creepy 2: A woman whose father left her family when she was six years old — and saw his then-mistress suggested to her as a Facebook friend 40 years later.
Apple is opening up their corporate culture. Helping to create industry standards, actually using them and even publishing research papers. Read
An update on the vision of Medium.com which took the world of social media and blogging by suprise and wants to up the quality of the internet. Read
The internet is amazingly well tuned to give you what you “want” — whether you want it or not. The current reward system that drives content online looks like this: Attention = Money. Lots and lots of people have a hunger for depth and knowledge — a hunger that is being underserved.
Hotmail is 20 years old and has changed so much. Read
Other
FarnamStreet on the mindset of success. Fear is the guide of amateurs. Read
How to become a better thinker with mental models. Read
Buster Benson (Slack), made a simple summary of all 200ish known cognitive biases that stand in the way of clear thinking and making decisions. Don’t give up 😃 It’s the fault of the universe. Read Discovering him was certainly a gem, check his other posts! Read His book will be under my tree🎄 this year.
Auditing the internet is a well-paid job in China with an army 💂 of at least 2 million employees who together censor the internet. Read
Ikea bought Taskrabbit, a small-jobs outsourcing company. Are they preparing for an even lazier world where others assemble your furniture? Read
The Circle’s prediction came true, WEchat is an official government ID. Read
The economist says display advertising will be gone by 2025, so paywalls everywhere then? Read
Someone brought back cassettes and of course they’re selling great because hipsters love their nostalgia and bringing back Vinyl weren’t enough. Read
Streaming is now the dominant revenue stream for all the major labels and many of the indies, and streaming is taking its place at the centre of the industry. Read
The UN used FB to survey refugees,… Another great example of how the most powerful technologies always have good and bad sides. Read
More people now have Netflix than a DVR, wow that went fast. Read
FMCG companies are trimming their ad budgets to get rid of low-quality ads. Read Read Read
Google is building a blimp. ✈️ (not Amazon? 😏). There comeback has been suggested for years with visions of air cruises and faster cargo transport than current sea-based transportation. Read
Facebook wants to become a TV & Movie Producer. (Following after Netflix, Amazon, Youtube and Apple and not kidding Linkedin) Read
Meanwhile Disney 🏰 is going to build a Netflix-competitor and bought 21 Century Fox. Will it users take multiple subscriptions? And will we get a Simpsons & Mickey Mouse 🐭 cross-over?Read Read
Why Belgium is so visibile from space 🌃 (corrupt energy 🔌policy…) Read
Congratulations
- You got to the end!? Wow, hope you enjoyed some of my gems 💎.
- NEW YEAR’s Resolution done. ✅
- Can’t get enough? => This post is another gems list you might like. Read
Thanks for Reading!
FJ
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